Like a Family
Like a Family

Author: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2012-12-30

Total Pages: 541

ISBN-13: 0807882941

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Since its original publication in 1987, Like a Family has become a classic in the study of American labor history. Basing their research on a series of extraordinary interviews, letters, and articles from the trade press, the authors uncover the voices and experiences of workers in the Southern cotton mill industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Now with a new afterword, this edition stands as an invaluable contribution to American social history. "The genius of Like a Family lies in its effortless integration of the history of the family--particularly women--into the history of the cotton-mill world.--Ira Berlin, New York Times Book Review "Like a Family is history, folklore, and storytelling all rolled into one. It is a living, revelatory chronicle of life rarely observed by the academe. A powerhouse.--Studs Terkel "Here is labor history in intensely human terms. Neither great impersonal forces nor deadening statistics are allowed to get in the way of people. If students of the New South want both the dimensions and the feel of life and labor in the textile industry, this book will be immensely satisfying.--Choice

Sawdust in Your Pockets
Sawdust in Your Pockets

Author: Eric Medlin

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 082036553X

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During the twentieth century, three industries-tobacco, textiles, and furniture-dominated the economy of North Carolina. The first two are well known and documented, being the subject of numerous books, movies, and articles. In contrast, the furniture industry has been mostly ignored by historians, although, at its height, it was nearly as large and influential as these other two concerns. Furniture companies employed thousands of workers and shaped towns, culture, and local life from Hickory to Goldsboro. Sawdust in Your Pockets: A History of the North Carolina Furniture Industry is the first survey of the state's furniture industry from its cabinetmaking beginnings to its digital present. Historian Eric Medlin shows how the industry transitioned from high-quality, individual pieces to the affordable, mass-produced furniture of High Point and Thomasville factories in the late nineteenth century. He then traces the rise of the industry to its midcentury peak, when North Carolina became the largest furniture-producing state in the country. Medlin discusses how competition, consolidation, and globalization challenged the furniture industry in the late twentieth century and how its businesses, workers, and professionals have adapted and evolved to this day.

Lucean Arthur Headen
Lucean Arthur Headen

Author: Jill D. Snider

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2020-01-29

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1469654369

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Born in Carthage, North Carolina, Lucean Arthur Headen (1879–1957) grew up amid former slave artisans. Inspired by his grandfather, a wheelwright, and great-uncle, a toolmaker, he dreamed as a child of becoming an inventor. His ambitions suffered the menace of Jim Crow and the reality of a new inventive landscape in which investment was shifting from lone inventors to the new "industrial scientists." But determined and ambitious, Headen left the South, and after toiling for a decade as a Pullman porter, risked everything to pursue his dream. He eventually earned eleven patents, most for innovative engine designs and anti-icing methods for aircraft. An equally capable entrepreneur and sportsman, Headen learned to fly in 1911, manufactured his own "Pace Setter" and "Headen Special" cars in the early 1920s, and founded the first national black auto racing association in 1924, all establishing him as an important authority on transportation technologies among African Americans. Emigrating to England in 1931, Headen also proved a successful manufacturer, operating engineering firms in Surrey that distributed his motor and other products worldwide for twenty-five years. Though Headen left few personal records, Jill D. Snider recreates the life of this extraordinary man through historical detective work in newspapers, business and trade publications, genealogical databases, and scholarly works. Mapping the social networks his family built within the Presbyterian church and other organizations (networks on which Headen often relied), she also reveals the legacy of Carthage's, and the South's, black artisans. Their story shows us that, despite our worship of personal triumph, success is often a communal as well as an individual achievement.